LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



LB 41 

PRESENTED BY 



UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. 



/ 



THE 



CULTIVATION of the IMAGINATION. 



%n Hbbress 



DELIVERED 15Y Till- 



RT. HON. GEORGE J. GOSCHEN, M.P., 



at Tin: 



LIVERPOOL INSTITUTE, LIVERPOOL, 
On the 29th November, 18V 7. 




LONDON : 
EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE. 



1878. 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 



a 







THE 



CULTIVATION of the IMAGINATION. 



%xi |ltr£rress 

DELIVERED BY THE 

RT. HON. GEORGE J. GOSCHEN, M.P., 



AT THE 



LIVERPOOL INSTITUTE, LIVERPOOL, 



On the 29th November, 1877. 




LONDON : 
EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE. 

1878. 

9f 



THE 

(Mtttati0iT nf % Imagination:, 



The scope of this Institute is so wide that it offers 
a very large choice of subjects to those who 
address the students on these occasions, and I 
dare say it often happens that those who come 
here to address you take advantage of the oppor- 
tunity to ventilate some educational hobby of 
their own. The presidents who have taken this 
chair in succession have certainly not all recom- 
mended the same kind of studies or taken the 
same line generally in their addresses on educa- 
tion ; and perhaps you will wonder what will be 
the line which he who is presiding on this occasion 
is likely to take. I have seen some of the addresses 
which have been delivered on previous occasions — 
addresses uttered by gentlemen who could speak 
with an educational authority which I could not 
command. Some have passed useful and practical 

a 2 



criticisms on the books used by you and on special 
courses of intellectual study. Others, speaking 
with regard to science and art, have given most 
valuable advice in connection with those depart- 
ments of this Institute which are connected with 
South Kensington. I do not propose to follow 
quite the same course ; I wish to speak to you this 
evening as a man of business, but I hope I may 
say as a man of business who knows what he owes 
to a public school and University education. 

I am about, then, to address you as a man of 
business, and, as I am speaking to the youth of 
this business city of Liverpool, and am bound to 
bear in mind that a great many of you are 
connected with business of one kind or another, 
I dare say you will expect that I am prepared to 
make a good business-like speech ; that 1 am 
about to recommend, in preference, the study of 
modern languages, of book-keeping, and of arith- 
metic ; and that I shall certainly warn you against 
those studies of which many people say — " What 
is their use?" And perhaps you may think that 
I shall wind up with some eloquent generalisations, 
speak of the danger of foreign competition with 
regard to our trade, point out to you that you 
must increase your taste and knowledge so 



as to be able to compete more successfully with 
foreign countries ; and finally appeal to you on 
behalf of technical education and sweeping 
reforms in your commercial schools. If your 
expectation is that such is the course I shall 
adopt this evening, possibly you may be disap- 
pointed. To use a familiar expression, this is 
not at all the line which I propose to take. I 
need not assure you that I am conscious of your 
local surroundings. I believe I know, or at least 
can imagine, the future that many of you intend 
to carve out for yourselves. I know the connec- 
tion of Liverpool, and of Liverpool men, with 
business ; but, nevertheless, conscious as I am of 
these considerations, I shall not hesitate to place 
some opinions before you as regards certain educa- 
tional ideas, and certain sides of training, which 
may at first sight surprise you, but which I shall 
nevertheless ask you very confidently to lay to 
heart. 

I wish to bring out very clearly a point of view 
on which I have a strong feeling. I wish to warn 
you of the danger of a too utilitarian education, 
and to insist on other tests as to the value of the 
instruction you receive besides its direct and 
immediate bearing on your prospects in life. If 



your aim in connection with this Institute is 
mainly professional, even in the best sense of the 
word — if it is directed less to your whole lives 
than to your careers — if your exclusive object is to 
qualify yourselves for bread-winning — a high and 
worthy object, but not the only object, of educa- 
tion even to the poorest man ; if such are your 
aims, and the aims of those who influence you, 
possibly there will be some head-shaking over my 
address this evening? For I stand here to plead 
a different cause, though certainly not an antago- 
nistic cause to what I have described. I have read 
many addresses on the subject of technical educa- 
tion — speeches in which useless branches of study 
are denounced ; and doubtless we have been 
behindhand in many respects. We know the 
splendid work done by many devoted friends of 
education who are determined that the producing 
powers of this country shall not be hampered iD 
the race by the want of that special knowledge 
and taste in which our neighbours may be apt to 
outstrip us. I honour them, and wish them 
"God-speed;" but, at the same time, I wish to 
remember that there is another side yet to educa- 
tional work. I hold that in intellectual matters, 
as well as in religious life, man cannot live on 



bread alone. I wish one of the key-notes of what 
I may say to you this evening to be — that a 
livelihood is not a life. Education must deal with 
your lives as well as qualify you for your liveli- 
hoods. I think you wiil hold that education must 
do more for you than enable you to win your 
bread, outstrip your neighbours, increase your 
business, and enable you to marry and bring up a 
family. I want education to ennoble, to brighten, 
and to beautify your lives. I wish it to increase 
your pleasures and your powers of happiness. I 
wish it to multiply your resources. I wish 
education to do that for the life which lies beyond 
arid outside of your own work which, by common 
consent, it must do for your work itself. And, 
therefore, while others plead on behalf of useful 
knowledge — and mind, I sympathise with them 
as well — I wish a hearing to be given also to 
another side of education which may not have an 
immediate marketable use, but which, neverthe- 
less, you cannot afford to neglect. I wish to speak 
to-night on behalf of the cultivation of the imagi- 
native faculties in the broadest sense of the term ; 
and I am not afraid to speak thus before a Liver- 
pool audience and as a business man, because I will 
not admit an antagonism between business and 



cultivation ; I will not admit that the cultivation 
of the imaginative faculties disqualifies men and 
women for the practical duties of life. Indeed, I 
hold that the cultivation of the imagination 
amongst all classes whom such an education can 
reach is not only important to the young them- 
selves as increasing their happiness, but impor- 
tant to the nation as qualifying them to become 
better citizens and fitting them to take a useful 
and noble part in our national duties. And I beg 
the most humble and poorest amongst you not to 
think I am going to talk over your heads to- 
night. I address these words in favour of the 
cultivation of the imagination to the poorest and 
most humble in the same way that I address 
them to the wealthiest and those who have the 
best prospects in life. I will try not to make the 
mistake which doctors commit when they recom- 
mend patients in receipt of £2 a week to have 
recourse to champagne and a short residence at 
the seaside. 

In what sense, then, do I use the word imagi- 
nation ? Johnson's Dictionary shall answer. I 
wish you particularly to note the answer Johnson 
gives as regards the meaning of " imagination." 
He defines it as " the power of forming ideal 



pictures ; " " the power of representing absent 
things to ourselves and to others." Such is the 
power which I am going to ask you, confidently, 
to cultivate in your schools, by your libraries, at 
home, by every influence which I can gain for the 
cause ; and I hope I shall be able to carry you 
with me, and show you why you should cultivate 
that power. I repeat, it is the power of forming 
ideal pictures, and of representing absent things 
to yourselves and to others. That is the sense in 
which I shall use the word imagination in the 
course of my address. Now, follow out this 
thought, and I think I can make my meaning- 
clear. Absent things ! Take history. History 
deals with the things of the past. They are 
absent, in a sense, from your minds — that is to 
say, you cannot see them; but the study of his- 
tory qualifies you and strengthens your capacity 
for understanding things that are not present to 
you, and thus I wish to recommend history to 
you as a most desirable course of study. Then, 
again, take foreign countries — travels. Here, 
again, you have matters which are absent, in the 
physical sense, from you ; but the study of travels 
will enable you to realise things that are absent 
to your own minds. And as for the power of 



10 

forming ideal pictures, there I refer you to poets, 
dramatists, and imaginative writers, to trie great 
literature of all times and of all countries. Such 
studies as these will enable you to live, and to 
move, and to think, in a world different from the 
narrow world by which you are surrounded. 
These studies will open up to you sources of 
amusement which, I think I may say, will often 
rise into happiness. I wish you, by the aid of 
the training which I recommend, to be able to 
look beyond your own lives, and have pleasure in 
surroundings different from those in which you 
move. I want you to be able — and mark this 
point — to sympathise with other times, to be able 
to understand the men and women of other 
countries, and to have the intense enjoyment — an 
enjoyment which, I am sure, you would all appre- 
ciate — of mental change of scene. I do not only 
want you to know dry facts ; I am not only look- 
ing to a knowledge of facts, nor chiefly to that 
knowledge. I want the heart to be stirred as 
well as the intellect. I want you to feel more 
and live more than you can do if you only know 
what surrounds yourselves. I want the action of 
the imagination, the sympathetic study of history 
and travels, the broad teaching of the poets, and, 



• 11 

indeed, of the best writers of other times and 
other countries, to neutralise and check the 
dwarfing influences of necessarily narrow careers 
and necessarily stunted lives. That is the point 
which you will see I mean when I ask you to 
cultivate the imagination. I want to introduce 
you to other, wider, and nobler fields of thought, 
and to open up vistas of other worlds, whence 
refreshing and bracing breezes will stream upon 
your minds and souls. 

I reject the theory which regards as " stuff and 
nonsense " all that does not really bear on the 
immediate practical duties of life. I struggle 
against the view which assails higher and deeper, 
aye, and more amusing studies with that shibbo- 
leth which we all know so well — " What is the 
use of all this to us practical men of business ? " 
Mind, I do not decline that challenge. I will speak 
of the use by and by. I will show that the course 
of training I recommend is of the greatest possible 
practical use ; but meanwhile I lay "in a protest 
that this is not the only result by which training 
can be tried. Its marketable use is not the only 
test, or even the chief test, to which we ought to 
look in education ; and I decline to have these 
courses of studies simply tried by the bearing 



12 

they may have on the means of gaming a liveli- 
hood. And here I think you may fairly note the 
difference between what I am asking you to do 
and what many others ask you to do. While I 
want you to acquire the power of representing to 
yourselves absent things, many persons, with 
more authority to speak than I have, beseech you 
to study what lies around you. The promoters 
of physical science, for instance, entreat you not 
to neglect the phenomena which surround you on 
every side, and ask you to analyse Nature, to 
make use of Nature, to turn Nature to your 
purposes, to your greater comfort and power. It 
would be unjust if I were to omit to say that they 
also recommend the study of physical science for 
its ennobling and educational influence on the 
mind ; and I say all honour to these studies. 
But let another field of work not be neglected — 
the cultivation of the power of forming ideal 
pictures and of representing things absent to 
yourselves and to others. 

And do not believe for one moment — I am 
rather anxious on this point — that the cultivation 
of this faculty will disgust you or disqualify you 
for your daily tasks. I hold a very contrary view. 
I spoke just now of mental change of scene ; and 



13 

as the body is better for a change of scene and a 
change of air, so I believe that the mind is also 
better for occasional changes of mental atmo- 
sphere. I do not believe that it is good either 
for men or women always to be breathing the 
atmosphere of the business in which they are 
themselves engaged. You know how a visit to 
the seaside sometimes brings colour to the cheeks 
and braces the limbs. Well, so I believe that h at 
mental change of scene which I recommend will 
bring colour into your minds, will brace you to 
greater activity, and will in every way strengthen 
both your intellectual and your moral facul- 
ties. I want you — if I may use the phrase — 
to breath the bracing ozone of the imagination. 
And over what worlds will not fancy enable you 
to roam ? — the world of the past, ideal worlds, and 
other worlds beyond your sight, probably brighter 
worlds, possibly more interesting worlds than the 
narrow world in which most of us are compelled 
to live ; at all events, different worlds and worlds 
that give us change. 

And now let me answer an objection which 
I know is in all your minds, though you may 
be too complimentary to give audible expres- 
sion to it. You are no doubt saying to your- 



14 

selves, " What in the name of common sense 
does Mr. Goschen mean ? If he thinks that the 
cultivation of the imagination be better than a 
knowledge of facts — if it be better to analyse 
absent things rather than study things present — 
why, then, not leave imagination to do its work ? 
Our lads and lasses may like this idle doctrine 
well enough, but why foist it on our business- 
like Institute ? " I will attempt to grapple with 
this objection. But before I do so I have got 
one more preliminary remark to make. I am so 
keen about the cultivation of the imagination 
that I wish to press into its service, not only the 
influence of an Institute like this, but home influ- 
ences — the influence that fathers and mothers 
may be able to bring to bear upon their children — 
the influence of every one who has a library — the 
influence of every one who can speak to the young 
— even pulpit influence I would exhort to assist 
in this work, because the cultivation of the imagi- 
nation is certainly on the side of religion and 
religious education. And I want to begin very 
early. Full of my wish to make all familiar with 
great worlds or little worlds differing from their 
own, I hold decided opinions even upon the 
subject of nursery and schoolboy literature. The 



15 

imagination is roused even when children are 
very young, and often the first lessons that are 
given to young children are of great importance 
in their after lives. You will expect, perhaps, 
that, with that disregard of useful knowledge of 
which I may stand accused, I am sure to be in 
favour of indiscriminate story-books as appealing 
to the imagination, and that I preach up the 
merits of works of fiction promiscuously. This 
would not represent my feeling in the least. I 
wish to point out to you that works of fiction, 
unfortunately, are frequently without any imagi- 
nation at all. Many is the three-volume novel 
which you can read through from beginning to 
end, and your mind will not be lit up with one 
spark of imagination. "What do some of these 
writers do ? They do that against which I protest. 
I can bring out my hobby by enlarging on this 
point. They photograph daily life. They do not 
introduce their readers to anything beyond daily 
life. In fact, what course do they take ? They 
describe characters precisely like the people whom 
they see every day ; they describe the very clothes 
worn by the people whom you meet every day ; 
they describe the very words which may be 
addressed to themselves ; the very smiles which 



16 

may be smiled at themselves ; they describe the 
very love which they hope may be made to them- 
selves or to their sisters ; and then, at the end, 
they think they have written a novel. Well, that 
may be fiction, but it is not imagination. Why, 
they have not " the power to form ideal pictures," 
or " to represent to themselves or to others 
absent things." They only deal with the present. 
Such novelists do not carry their readers to other 
worlds. They do not cultivate the imagination of 
their readers. I think this illustration will give 
you some glimpse of that at which I am driving. 
What I want for the young are books and stories 
which do not simply deal with our daily life. I 
prefer "Alice in Wonderland," as a book for 
children, to those little stories of " Tommies " and 
" Freddies," which are but little photographs of 
the lives of "Tommies" and "Freddies" who 
read the books. I like "Grimm's Fairy Tales " 
better than little nursery novelettes. I like the 
fancy even of little children to have some larger 
food than images of their own little lives ; and I 
confess I am sorry for the children whose imagi- 
nations are not sometimes stimulated by beautiful 
fairy tales, or by other tales which carry them to 
different worlds from those in which their future 



17 

will be passed. Doubtless boys and girls like 
photographs of the saying3 and doings of other 
boys and girls — school life sketched with realistic 
fidelity — and doubtless many young people like 
love stories similar to those through which they 
may have to pass themselves. But there is little 
imagination in all this. The facts are fictitious, 
but the life is real. Do not misunderstand me. 
It is not that I wish to combine instruction with 
amusement in what is often a hopeless alliance. 
I do not wish to stint young people of amusing 
books. But I will tell you what I do like for 
boys and girls. I like to see boys and girls 
amuse themselves with tales of adventure, with 
stories of gallant deeds and noble men, with 
stories of the seas, of mountains, of wars, with 
descriptions of scenes different from those in 
which they live. But I will make an exception. 
Sometimes contemporary stories are told with 
such genial nobleness of aim, and with such purity 
of spirit, that they are of high moral and mental 
value, and certainly I should be sorry that any 
man shoul deny a boy the intense enjoyment of 
reading " Tom Brown's School Days," nor would 
I grudge a girl the deep pleasure and interest of 
reading the fortunes of " The Heir of Bedclyffe." 



18 

No doubt stories of our daily lives may frequently 
be made to answer great and noble purposes, but 
still, as a general rule, andj looking generally to 
the literature for the young, I hold that what 
removes them more or less from their daily life 
is better than what reminds them of it at every 
step. I like boys to read, for instance, the " Last 
of the Mohicans " — to sail across the sea with 
Captain Marryat's tars. I like them to read the 
tales of the Crusades, or of our own border wars 
— books of travel in the North, the Arctic regions, 
in the South, the East, and the West. I like 
them, in short, to read anything rather than 
realistic prose, exaggerated or even faithful de- 
scriptions of their life of every day. Kemember 
what I am driving at is the cultivation of the 
power of representing things different from those 
amongst which we live. 

But all this, you will say, is scarcely educa- 
tional. I maintain, however, that it is educational 
in a certain sense. The books which are read in 
the leisure hours are sometimes as educational 
even as those which are read in the times of 
study. But I will now apply myself to the studies 
over which this Institute has an influence, and I 
will grapple boldly with my task. You will see 



19 

that I have hitherto seemed to jumble up fairy 
tales and history — travels and simple creations 
of the brain. To my mind they all do a certain 
work in common. But when I come to serious 
educational work, let me single out history 
for special remark. I am an enthusiast for the 
study of history, and I entreat you to give it as 
much attention as you can at this place. You 
will see that my whole argument tends to the 
study of history and of general literature, not for 
the sake of the facts alone, not for mere know- 
ledge, but for their influence on the mind. His- 
tory may be dry and technical if you confine 
yourself to the chronological order of facts — if you 
study only to know what actually took place at 
certain dates. I am sure we have all suffered 
from the infliction of skeleton histories — excellent 
tests of patience, but I am afraid as little exciting 
to the imagination as any other study in which 
any one can possibly engage. What I am look- 
ing to is rather the colouring of history — the 
familiarity with times gone by, with the characters, 
the passions, the thoughts and aspirations of 
men who have gone before us. History with that 
life and colour — and many historians of the 
present day write histories which fulfil these 

b 2 



20 

conditions — history with that life and colour 
cultivates the imagination as much and better 
than many of the best romances. When thus 
written, and when once the reader is fairly 
launched into it, history is as absorbing as a 
novel, and more amusing and interesting than 
many a tale. I will be quite candid with you. 
I am something of a novel reader myself. I admit 
that I like reading a novel occasionally. The fact 
is, there is one difference between a novel and a 
history which is in favour of the former at the first 
start. In a history the first fifty pages are often 
intolerably dull, and it is the opening which, to use 
a familiar expression, chokes off half the readers. 
You generally have some preliminary description 
— of the state of Europe, for instance, or of the 
state of India, or the state of France, or some 
other country at a given time. You don't come 
to the main point — you don't come to what 
interests you at first sight ; and thus many per- 
sons are frightened off before they thoroughly get 
into the book, and they throw aside a history, 
and characterise it as being very dull. Now, in 
a novel you very often begin to enjoy yourself at 
the very first page. Still, when I have taken up 
some interesting history — for instance, lately I 



21 

have been reading " Kaye's History of the Sepoy 
War " — and when I have got over the first few 
introductory pages, which are a little heavy, I say 
to myself, How is it possible that a man of sense 
can spend his time on reading novels when there 
are histories of this absorbing interest, which are 
so vastly more entertaining, so vastly more 
instructive, and so much better for the mind 
than any novel ? Believe me, an intelligent and 
a systematic study of history contains a vast 
resource of interest and amusement to all those 
who will embark in it. Let me explain a little 
more. Histories, if you only deal with chrono- 
logical details, you may possibly find to be 
exceedingly like " Bradshaw's Railway Guide " — 
very confusing, very uninteresting in themselves, 
only useful sometimes in enabling you to know 
how to go from one period to another — to make an 
historical journey. Or you might compare these 
general surveys of history of which I was speak- 
ing to a skeleton map of a country of which you 
know very little. You see the towns noted down. 
They are but uninteresting spot3 on the map. 
They convey nothing to you ; they don't interest 
you. But if you have travelled in that country, 
if you know the towns mentioned on the map, 



22 

then you pore over the map with a very different 
interest. It gives you real personal pleasure ; 
your mind and imagination recall the country 
itself. So you will find that the grand secret to 
enjoy history is to get beyond the outlines, to be 
thoroughly familiar with a particular period, 
to saturate yourselves with the facts, the events, 
the circumstances, and the personages which 
belong to a certain time in history. When you 
have done this, the men and women of that 
period become your personal friends ; you take an 
intense delight in their society, and you expe- 
rience a sense of pleasure equivalent to what is 
given by any novel. I heard yesterday an anec- 
dote of a lady who had lived a great deal in 
political circles. She had received from a friend 
a book about Sir Thomas More. When she had 
read it, she wrote back and thanked the sender of 
the book, telling him with what delight she had 
perused it, and adding, " Sir Thomas More and 
Erasmus are particularly intimate friends of 
mine." She was so well acquainted with that 
period, that all that was written about it came 
home to her heart — she knew it, she had lived in 
it, and it had a living interest for her. That is 
the mode and manner in which I would recom- 



23 

mend you to study history. Let me be more 
precise. I would not gallop through histories 
any more than I would through a country if I 
wanted to explore it. I would take a particular 
period, and read every book bearing on that 
particular period which my library supplied me, 
and which I had time to read. Then I would 
read the poets who had written in the same 
period. I should read the dramas relating to 
that period, and thus I should saturate myself 
with everything which was connected with it, and 
by that means I would acquire that power which 
I value, which I want you to have individually, 
and which I should like every English man and 
woman to have as far as they could, namely, the 
power of being able to live in other times and 
sympathise with other times, and to sympathise 
with persons and races and influences different 
from those amongst which we move. 

And do not think that in such studies you lose 
your time. Are there fathers and mothers here 
who hold that it is a dangerous doctrine which I 
preach ? If so, I hope I may be able to reassure 
them ; for I hold that in all spheres and all classes 
culture of this kind is of the highest value, and 
that it does not disqualify, but the reverse, for 



24 

business life. Amongst the wealthier classes of 
business men, I rejoice to think that prejudice 
against culture as being dangerous to business is 
rapidly dying out, and that a University education 
is no longer regarded with suspicion. "What do 
men learn at Oxford and Cambridge that will fit 
them for business ? " was formerly often asked ; 
but I do not think this question is put quite so 
often now. I will tell you what once occurred to 
myself in regard to this point. Some eight years 
ago I met a distinguished modern poet, calling at 
the same house where I was calling, and he asked, 
" What becomes of all the Senior Wranglers and 
of all the Oxford First Class men ? One does 
not hear of them in after-life." I ventured very 
modestly to say in reply that, not being a Cam- 
bridge man, I could not speak on behalf of 
Cambridge men ; but as to Oxford I was able 
to inform him that eight of her First Class men 
were at that moment in Her Majesty's Cabinet. 

But you may say, " This is all very well for the 
greater affairs of life, but as regards the general 
rough-and-tumble of business life, why should 
you have this cultivation ? Is it not dangerous, 
and does it not rather hamper a young man when 
he goes into business life ? " Let me give you 



25 

another instance on this point, and you will forgive 
me if it is somewhat of a personal character ; but 
it may come home to some of the young men here 
more forcibly than the most eloquent generalisa- 
tion. My own father came over to England as a 
very young man, with one friend as young as 
himself, and with very little more money in his 
pocket than a great many of the students here, I 
dare say, possess ; and he has told me, half in joke 
and half in earnest, that he was obliged to found 
a firm because he wrote such a bad hand that no 
one would take him for a clerk. But he was 
steeped to the lips in intellectual culture. In his 
father's house, as a boy, he had met all the great 
literary men of the best period of German litera- 
ture. He had heard Schiller read his own plays. 
He had listened to the conversation of great 
thinkers and great poets. He was a good his- 
torian, an acute critic, well versed in literature, 
and a very good musician to boot. But did this 
stand in his way as a young man coming over to 
London with a view to found a business ? Has it 
stood in his way of founding a firm of which 
I, as his son, am very proud ? It did not stand 
in his way. On the contrary, it aided his success ; 
and, with this before me, I hope you will say that 



26 

I am able to speak with affectionate conviction of 
the fact that culture will not interfere with the 
due discharge of the duties of business men in 
any sphere of business life. 

I will not add to what I have said about the 
great increase of happiness and amusement to be 
gained for your own leisure in after-life if you 
follow the studies I have named. It is most 
certainly for your happiness and advantage ; but 
you may remember that I used much stronger 
language than this. I said it was not only of 
advantage for the young themselves, but for the 
national advantage, that imaginative culture 
should be considered as one of the aims of educa- 
tion. I have still got to make this point good. 
Consider what are the duties of this country in 
which we live. Let me now take you away from 
Liverpool — away even from England — and ask you 
to look at our imperial duties — at our colonies, 
at our vast empire, at our foreign relations — and 
then I want you to ask yourselves whether it is 
important or not that Englishmen shall be able 
to realise to themselves what is not immediately 
around them, that they shall be able to transport 
themselves in imagination to other countries over 
which they rule. It is not sufficient for English- 



27 

men to think only of their own surroundings. 
There was a time when the destinies of England 
used to be wielded by a few individual men, or by 
small coteries of trained statesmen. India was 
governed for years externally to the influence of 
public opinion. But that is past now. Public 
opinion is now stepping in ; and, if public opinion 
steps in, I wish that public opinion to be properly 
trained. Why, even ministers for foreign affairs 
now declare that they wait the behests of the 
public, their employers, before they take any 
decided step. If public opinion assumes these 
responsibilities, again I say, " Let us look to the 
formation of that public opinion, and see that the 
young generation of Englishmen are trained pro- 
perly for the discharge of these functions." 
Parliament is more and more sharing with the 
executive Government of the country the duties 
of administration, and the press and the public 
are more and more sharing this duty with Parlia- 
ment. Therefore you will understand the import- 
ance I attach to the training of the coming 
generation, not only in useful knowledge, but in 
all that they ought to know and ought to be able 
to feel and think when they are discharging 
imperial duties. 



28 

And, I ask, by what power can this result be 
better obtained than by the intelligent study of 
history and of modes of thought which lie beyond 
our own immediate range ? It is no easy thing 
for democracies to rule wisely and satisfactorily 
self-governing colonies or subject races. Imagi- 
nation, in its highest and broadest sense, is neces- 
sary for the noble discharge of imperial duties. 
The governing classes — and we are all governing 
classes now — should be able to represent to 
themselves absent things — all the impulses, 
and sympathies, and passions of other races 
different from themselves. To ignore this, to be 
narrow-minded, is a very great national danger. 
Narrow-mindedness lost us in times past the 
American Colonies. Statesmen were not able to 
sympathise with, or throw themselves into, the 
position of these Colonies ; they could not repre- 
sent to themselves absent things ; and they 
thought that this England of ours, with what they 
learned here, was sufficient for their guidance in 
the discharge of their imperial duties. It is not 
enough. We must look beyond our own local 
surroundings. In the study of history you will 
also be able to meet the ignorance which may 
possibly prevail in many places with regard to our 



29 

own history and our own colonial empire. What 
sentiment brings down a popular audience more 
thoroughly than when a great statesman or 
popular orator exclaims, " We are an historic 
people ? " May I be permitted humbly to suggest 
that, if we are a great historic people, we may 
with advantage study and know our own history ? 
May I ask that, if we are an historic people, we 
may take advantage of our history as a lesson for 
the future ? and that, if we are an imperial 
people, we may also study and lay to heart and 
know the conditions of some of the races and the 
colonies over which we rule ? I wonder how 
much many of us know of the way in which the 
Indian Empire was originally won and maintained. 
I dare say some of you reproach me in your 
hearts, and say, "We know all about it;" and 
why? because everybody — at any rate, a great 
many people — have read the essays of Lord 
Macaulay on Clyde and Warren Hastings ; but if 
these two essays had not been written, I wonder 
how much would be known of the history of 
India ? I do not do wrong, then, I think, if I 
recommend the pupils of this Institute to push 
the study of our own national history, and to 
enter and throw themselves into that study with 



80 

patriotism and alacrity. It is the duty of citizens 
to read and know their own past. I want to 
stimulate a habit of mind which is capable of 
apprehending and sympathising with a state of 
things different from that which surrounds us. 

I do not know whether it is an apocryphal 
story or not that a distinguished statesman once 
said that a page of the Times was more worth 
reading than the whole of Thucydides. If that 
was ever said, I should reply, " No, a thousand 
times No." That sentiment embodies the very 
tone of mind against which I am contending. It 
means that it is important to give an exclusive 
study to that which is surrounding us, and that 
we have less to do with the great past. Yes, if 
our duty and our pleasure were to deal only with 
matters that lie around ourselves — if, for instance, 
in Parliament, we had only to pass gas and water 
Bills, to improve tariffs, to deal with the material 
aspects of the present, and the growing resources 
which railroads and telegraphs bestow — then the 
hasty survey of passing events which the daily 
journals supply might be more useful to us than 
the history of an Athenian war, even though that 
history were written with spirit-stirring eloquence 
and patriotism, and were full of sound political 



31 

reflections which remain true throughout eternal 
time. But if we have more to do than this, if 
we have not only to deal with Englishmen pre- 
cisely like ourselves — if English public opinion 
and English statesmen have not only to deal with 
Englishmen who are registered at their birth by 
an English Begistrar-G-eneral, then vaccinated 
according to an English Act of Parliament, and 
sent, under another English Act of Parliament, 
through elementary schools, and dealt with for 
the remainder of their lives under English Acts 
of Parliament ; but if, besides, we have to deal 
with subject races who are more like the men 
described by Herodotus than average London or 
Liverpool men, then I hope you will understand 
how important it is that we should cultivate the 
capacity of understanding what others think and 
do, and so be able to lift ourselves beyond the 
ordinary range of daily life. 

Men who know little of our previous history, 
and are feeble in their power to imagine — that is, 
to represent to themselves the situations and 
views of other nations — are what I consider a 
dangerous element in the formation of public 
opinion. Those men are still more dangerous if, 
because they know very little, and because they 



are somewhat local and narrow-minded, they 
fancy themselves to be practical men. I am 
often frightened when, upon some great question, 
I hear a man say, "lam going to take a very 
business-like view of this question." It is almost 
as bad as when a man, upon some question of 
propriety, says he is going to look at it as a man 
of the world. I then always suspect the judg- 
ment he is going to give. When a man says, " I 
am going to look at a great question as a business 
man," it is ten to one he means, " I am not going 
to be gulled by any of your grand generalisations ; 
I am not going to be misled by historical parallels, 
or seduced by any rhetorical phrases. I do not 
wish to be told what foreign nations are thinking 
of or are likely to do. I wish to judge of this as a 
sensible man of business. I know the effect such 
and such a line of policy will have on trade and 
on the funds, and that is enough for me." Now, 
I have sometimes hoped that I might have 
claimed myself to be a business man, or a busi- 
ness-like man; and most of you will consider 
yourselves the same ; and I say that is prostitut- 
ing the name of " business-like " to confound it, 
as it is often done, with a narrow-minded view of 
imperial questions. That is not business-like at 



33 

all ; it is very unbusiness-like. Call it by what- 
ever name you will, whether narrow-mindedness 
or not, I consider that to judge from hand to 
mouth of all our great questions is a very dan- 
gerous tendency — a tendency which is fostered by 
ignorance of the great principles of human action, 
and of the former teaching of the history of the 
world. Again, you will think me very persistent. 
The study of history will correct these tendencies, 
and will mitigate the influence of any narrow- 
minded judgment of passing events. Some news- 
papers, for instance — I am speaking entirely 
hypothetically — often take alarm, and begin to 
think they ought to write down the power of 
England. They begin to minimise our power, 
and they say, " What can England do ? Look at 
the size of our little island. Look at the 
statistical lists of our ships and guns, of our men 
and armies. What can we do ? After all, we 
are very small in numbers." Again, I dislike a 
sentence which begins with " after all," because I 
know that when a man begins to say " after 
all " he means that he will not meet me 
on my own ground, but that he is going 
to meet me on some other ground totally different 
from that which is the subject of our argument. 



34 

Well, it is said, " ' After all,' what can England 
do ? " Now, I should like the public sometimes 
to be able, when it is asked " what can England 
do," to check this appeal to contemporary 
statistics by an intelligent recollection of the 
statistics of the past. I do not say that I want 
England to do anything, but I do not want it to 
be laid down that England can not do anything. 
I rebel against this tendency of always writing 
down our own country, as if our powers were 
insufficient. Study history as I ask you, and 
you will be able to answer those who urge objec- 
tions of this kind. Study the history of the past, 
and see what England has done at times when 
neither her population nor her wealth was such 
as it is at present, and you will wonder when it is 
said that England, " after all," is a small country. 
How many of you in this room know what the 
population of this country was in the great Napo- 
leonic times, when England took the lead, and 
when newspapers did not point to the size of the 
island and the smallness of the population as 
compared with the population of other countries ? 
Our population at the present time is about 
33,000,000, probably more. The population of 
Great Britain in 1801, when the census was 



35 

taken, including the armies serving abroad, was 
under 11,000,000,* and I ask you to remem- 
ber the historical lessons which that great 
time teaches. Remember what England, with 
that population, was enabled to do, and what 
weight her counsels had in Europe and through- 
out the world. To my mind, the teaching of 
history is this, that, notwithstanding Krupp guns 
and Palliser shells ; notwithstanding Martini and 
Chassepot rifles ; notwithstanding ironclads and 
torpedoes ; notwithstanding field telegraphs and 
balloons ; and notwithstanding that one great 
European Power has lost her influence, and 
another great Power has gained influence in 
Europe ; notwithstanding all this, the teaching 
of history is, that a great country of 33,000,000 
of inhabitants, unsurpassed in wealth, has no 
business to depreciate her own power or mini- 
mise those great efforts which, if need be, but 
only if need be and if right be, she will venture 
to put forth. 

But perhaps some of you may think that I have 
been wasting my pains. You may think that, 

'"' The census of Ireland was not taken in 1801, so that the 
total population of Great Britain and Ireland at that date 
cannot be stated. 

c 2 



36 

though I have been pleading in favour of the 
cultivation of the imagination amongst the Eng- 
lish people, the results I aim at have been 
achieved to a very considerable extent already, 
and that we are highly imaginative because, as I 
admit, we are becoming a highly sentimental and 
susceptible people. I admit that it is very unfair 
on the part of foreigners continually to say, as 
they do say, that Englishmen are not prepared 
ever to make sacrifices for an idea. I consider 
that England, especially in late generations, has 
certainly been ready to make considerable sacri- 
fices, not only on material grounds, but on moral 
grounds. For instance, take the abolition of the 
Slave Trade. That was an effort which England 
made from the sincerest and purest motives of 
conviction and morality ; but nearly all Conti- 
nental writers disbelieve in the self-sacrificing 
nature of that great measure, and declare that 
we were guided by self-interest. They are 
entirely deceived. Where the country's feelings 
have been touched, we have again and again been 
willing to make considerable sacrifices, and we 
should again be prepared to make such sacrifices 
in the cause of right and morality. But I do not 
admit that susceptibility and sentiment are at all 



37 

equivalent to that imaginative capacity with 
which I have been dealing. I do not at all wish 
to stimulate further what I may call the sus- 
ceptible side of English politics, because I think 
we have gone far enough in that direction. I 
prefer that manly and sturdy national character 
which I see written in many of the great histories 
I have recommended you to study, and I do not 
at all consider that the cultivation of the power of 
representing to yourselves absent things, and of 
being able to sympathise with and to understand 
the necessities of our colonies and of other 
countries, and to take generally that wider and 
broader view that I have recommended, are at all 
identical with the development of a sentimental 
character in politics — a tendency which I, for 
one, view with some alarm. 

Well, now, I am afraid that I have taken you a 
very long way. I began with the nursery, and I 
am afraid I have launched you in the end into a 
very wide field indeed. I might have followed up 
my argument by showing the necessity, even for 
many serious domestic questions, of cultivating 
the faculty to which I have alluded. I might 
almost venture to say that a House of Commons 
without imagination would, to my mind, be a bad 



88 

House of Commons and a dangerous House of 
Commons. A church without imagination would 
be a church without life and without the power of 
retaining its hold upon its flocks. Imagination, 
in the sense which I have described, is necessary 
everywhere, and perhaps we have too little of it 
now in great many departments of life ; and I 
will tell you why. Because we are all too much 
oppressed with detail — because, in the study of 
detail, and in the study of useful knowledge, we 
frequently too much ignore and too much forget 
the broader lines of study, and the more impor- 
tant generalisations which neither statesmen nor 
electors, nor indeed any class, ought ever to lose 
sight of. And so I hope I have been justified, 
when addressing a great institution such as this, 
with two thousand students whom it trains — I 
hope I have been justified, not only in looking to 
the actual work which is being performed within 
your walls, but also in venturing to put before 
you certain general ideas as to the faculties which 
ought to be developed, and studies which ought 
to be pursued. And you will not think because I 
have mainly insisted on one particular line of 
thought, that I therefore ignore the immense 
importance of your other studies ; I have simply 



89 

thought it might be well on this occasion that the 
other side should be put forward for once, and 
that I might fairly make as strong a plea as I 
could for the cultivation of studies on which I, in 
my heart, believe so much depends. Full of this 
conviction, I confidently ask you all to apply 
yourselves to these studies, both at home, in this 
Institute, in your public libraries, by every avail- 
able means. Once more let me say to you that a 
livelihood is not a life, and, believe me, if you 
devote yourselves to such studies — if you are able 
to cultivate that power which I have asked you to 
cultivate — you will find that it will make you 
better citizens, more ardent patriots, and better 
and happier men and women. 



EFFINGHAM WIISOH, BOYAL BXCHANGB, LONDON, B.C. 



v^UNlaRESS 



019 847 457 




